WordPress as a Headless Content Management System (CMS) and GraphQL API

WordPress has been around for a long time and powers a huge number of sites.

WordPress has been around for a long time and powers a huge number of sites.

Just because WordPress isn't brand new doesn't mean it can't get the job done!

Running WordPress as a Headless CMS gives you the benefit of a great content creation experience on the back end with the powerful Gutenberg editor while allowing you to use a modern JavaScript framework on the front-end.

In this course, Kevin Cunningham will guide you through setting up WordPress as a headless CMS from scratch, as well as migrating from an existing WP site. You'll get practice with different WordPress content types, implement a GraphQL endpoint for querying data, and backup & deploy your site. All the while, you'll deepen your understanding of how headless WordPress approaches the relationship between content & rendering.

Using WordPress as a headless CMS turns it into a datasource ready to work with Gatsby, Next.js, or whatever else you want to build with. Your and your clients will be able to take advantage of WordPress's content editing experience, without having to settle for a cookie-cutter theme on the frontend.

With WordPress being decoupled from the rendered site, the database isn't hit for every request. This means faster performance and more security against WordPress exploits. You don't even have to host the editor at the same domain as the published site.

While watching, consider…
What are the tradeoffs of using a CMS for a site?
Would headless WordPress work for me or my clients in this scenario?

What you'll learn
Configure a WordPress instance using Local
Install & customize WP Plugins
Create custom post types
Customize and interact with data via the REST API
Expose a GraphQL API, and query for exactly what you want
Generate fake WordPress data
Add Comment functionality
Prerequisites
PHP familiarity helpful